Review! Mud Vein by Tarryn Fisher

When reclusive novelist Senna Richards wakes up on her thirty-third birthday, everything has changed. Caged behind an electrical fence, locked in a house in the middle of the snow, Senna is left to decode the clues to find out why she was taken. If she wants her freedom, she has to take a close look at her past. But, her past has a heartbeat... and her kidnapper is nowhere to be found. With her survival hanging by a thread, Senna soon realizes this is a game. A dangerous one. Only the truth can set her free.

THOUGHTS

The truth is, I felt the need to write this review, but I don’t know how to rate this book. Sometimes it happens to me, mostly with the titles that EVERYBODY else loved. I don’t know if it’s because of the greater expectation that you generally have from a highly rated story, because I try to start it without expecting something. But still, if several thousand people say it’s awesome, then it must have something good.

If you ask me, there’s no such thing as a perfect book. The best book you’ll ever read is still not perfect. And there’s also no such thing as a totally bad book. You can find something good in every single one of them. But the most important thing, at least for me, is the feeling I’m left with after finishing the lecture.

For Mud Vein, I was left with nothing. Neither sadness, nor joy, just a big void. Or I WAS left with something: disappointment.

Let’s start with the plot, because, in the beginning, I thought that this book had one. Well, I was wrong, it hasn’t. And it’s a little bit frustrating, because it had so much potential! I liked the mystery, the clues, the settlement, even the characters. But as I got deeper into the story, I realized that the motive behind it wasn’t good enough.

The characters are not so well defined. For the most part of the book I’ve struggled to understand them and to find a strong motivation for the way they’re acting. Especially for Senna. She’s spineless, depressing, overdramatizing everything that happened in her childhood and she’s ruining her life all by herself, for no good reason. As much as I tried to like her or feel sorry, pity, compassion, anything positive for her situation… I couldn’t.

For the most part, I liked Isaac, even if I couldn’t see him as a strong male character. He is a great character in some ways and I enjoyed his presence, but he failed the two people that should have been his whole world: his wife and child. I was so, so disappointed!

The supporting characters are almost absent. Again, the most important one of them, the kidnapper, had so much potential, but, in the end, failed to impress me. The whole mystery surrounding him, that could have been the best thing in the book finished by being plain, vague and without a strong motivation.

In the end, Mud Vein was, for me, nothing but a huge disappointment. The only thing that kept me reading until the end and that I found truly great is the writing style. I LOVED Tarryn’s writing style! That’s why I’ll pick up her next book and even give her other trilogy another chance.

Happy Reading!